CHOEOGEAPHY. 11 



the east by the Sierra Nevada, which ranges meet both at the 

 north and the south, is the heart of the state, four hundred 

 miles long by fifty wide, reaching from latitude 35° to 40° 30'. 

 It is drained by two rivers : the Sacramento, running from the 

 north ; and the San Joaquin, from the south. They meet and 

 unite in the centre of the basin, at 38°, and break throuo-h the 

 Coast range to the Pacific, forming the bays of Suisun, San 

 Pablo, and San Francisco, on their way. The mountains rise 

 steeply from the edge of the valley, which is nearly level, about 

 thirty feet above the level of the sea at the junction of the 

 rivers, and two hundred feet higher where they issue from the 

 mountains. Part of the Sacramento valley shows terraces, the 

 farthest from the river being a coarse gravel. The richest soil 

 is on the immediate bank. The great body of the valley is 

 bare of trees. Its even surface is broken in only one place, 

 by the " Buttes," a range of volcanic hills, six miles wide by 

 twelve long, with three peaks, about two thousand feet high, 

 which rise in lonely abruptness from the middle of the plain, 

 in 39° 20'. The general course of the two main rivers of the 

 basin lies nearly midway between the two mountain-chains, 

 but almost all their tributaries come from the Sierra Nevada, 

 which, Uke the Coast range, has most of its wealth on its western 

 slope. In the four hundred miles from Tejon to Shasta there 

 are a dozen creeks marked on the map as flowing eastward 

 from the Coast range to the San Joaquin and Sacramento ; but 

 during the summer, three-fourths of them are swallowed up 

 in the sands before reaching their mouths. Not one south of 

 38° is a permanent stream. From the Sierra Nevada a num- 

 ber of rivers run westward. Beginning at the north, we have 

 the Pit, Feather, Yuba, American, Cosumnes, Mokelumne, 

 Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, San Joaquin, King's, 

 White, and Kern Rivers — all of them considerable streams, 

 though some of those in the southern part of the Sacramento 

 basin are swallowed up in the sands, in the dry seasons, before 

 reachmg their mouths. The San Joaquin River does not rise 

 at the extreme southern end of the basin, but one hundred 



